The study of religious or heroic legends and tales. One constant rule of mythology is that whatever happens amongst the gods or other mythical beings was in one sense or another a reflection of events on earth. Recorded myths and legends, perhaps preserved in literature or folklore, have an immediate interest to archaeology in trying to unravel the nature and meaning of ancient events and traditions.

This is long and, as it gets into the swing of it, exceedingly good stuff.

Not because I say so, but because you cannot get far back into the past without running into this stuff. The more literate societies were, the more of this was woven into the fabric of their worlds. Since the collapse of the blanket dismissal of them as dolts given to hallucinating, what they took very seriously indeed has to be re-appraised -- at least in so far as what made them who they were. And what its foundation in experience was or may have been.